People to watch in 2002: Insurance is more than companies and numbers. Here are a few of the people likely to affect the course of the industry in the year ahead. (Industry Strategies).

Adam Abram, chairman, Omega Management Inc. Omega Management is a start-up specialty reinsurer that will acquire books of business in runoff from primary carriers. Omega will reinsure those books of business, administer claims and assume the financial obligations of the net retention of the primary carrier. Abram and his team, which includes former Connecticut Insurance Commissioner George M. Reider Jr., are in the process of organizing a $100 million risk pool, assembling a strong team of claims professionals and acquiring a shell company that is licensed to do business in 35 states.

Jon A. Boscia, chairman and chief executive officer, Lincoln National Corp. Change is good, and Boscia has wrought much of it the past three years, including divestitures, acquisitions, integrations, strategic refocuses, a major corporate relocation to Philadelphia, a shift of focus to the affluent market and a revitalization of the company's mutual-fund subsidiary. Most recent was this summer's announced $2 billion sale of Lincoln's reinsurance subsidiary, Lincoln Re, to Swiss Re. But if change is good, what moves will Boscia make in 2002? And with assets under management down due to the bear market in stocks, will Boscia find a way to boost fee income dependent on assets?

J. Hyatt Brown, chairman, president and CEO, Brown & Brown. The insurance and risk-management agency Brown & Brown continues its voracious agency-buying spree, started in the early 1980s, with no signs of slowing. J. Hyatt Brown, a no-nonsense, hard-driving CEO, is indeed the guiding force behind this business. During the past several years, Brown & Brown, of Daytona Beach and Tampa, Fla., has made between 25 and 30 transactions a year, putting the company into at least 25 states and making it a leading independent insurance intermediary.

Christopher "Kip" Condron, p Financial Inc. Condron left Mellon Financial Corp. to join Axa in May. He has proven leadership abilities and extensive financial-planning and asset-management experience to build upon the success that the company has had under his predecessor, Edward Miller. It will be interesting to watch Condron's plans unfold and see what he will bring to Axa during his first full year with the company.

Anthony G. Dickson, president and CEO, New Jersey Manufacturers Group. Some of the biggest auto insurers are leaving New Jersey because they haven't been granted the rate increases they requested, but New Jersey Manufacturers Insurance Co. doesn't have that option because it has built its business in the Garden State. But under Dickson's leadership, the company is doing well despite the challenges. It's the state's third-largest auto insurer in terms of number of policies. The primary problem for New Jersey Manufacturers, which insures slightly more than 600,000 drivers, is that New Jersey has a "take-all-corners" mandate and the company could be inundated with high-risk drivers if other insurers follow through on their pledge to stop writing in the state.

John Dingell, U.S. Representative, D-Mich. Best-known for his involvement in the patients' rights debate, Dingell also has his finger in several other legislative initiatives that affect the insurance industry. After several votes and much debate, the Ganske-Dingell-Norwood-Berry bill appears to have the best chance of becoming law. The final House version was reached through a compromise with the White House, and President Bush has said he will not sign the version passed by the Senate. Dingell also has kept his eye on what state insurance regulators have done or are doing to implement protection of the privacy rights of consumers under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act. And he is pushing the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to improve its state-accreditation program, after financier Martin Frankel allegedly swindled more than $200 million in assets from several insurance companies in five states.

Dan Eudy, president, Industrial Risk Insurers. Industrial Risk Insurers, a subsidiary of General Electric Co.'s Employers Reinsurance Corp., has lost its appetite for carrying large exposures on highly protected risks, which include factories, manufacturers and high-rises like the World Trade Center. The company announced in October that it was lowering its maximum single exposure to $10 million in the first layer, down from $1 billion. IRI also is hoping to harness its know-how in risk management by branching off a services division. Eudy will lead the new company as it rolls out the new business model.

Ruth A. Fattori, executive vice president, process and productivity, Conseco Inc. Conseco Chairman and CEO Gary Wendt recruited Fattori a year ago to head Process Excellence, Conseco's version of the Six Sigma program that manufacturers have used with much success. Wendt has had his hands full with downsizing and restructuring Conseco and with paying back its huge debts on time. He is setting loose Fattori and her cast of hundreds to root out $100 million worth of internal inefficiencies by this spring and more in the future. While Fattori's work typically does not fall under the spotlight, its results may soon show up in quarterly earnings reports, which Conseco needs to improve to return to profitability. Can Six Sigma principles be applied to the financial services industry? Fattori's early results, and her record at a previous employer, GE Capital, suggest that they can--significantly.

Jay S. Fishman, chairman and CEO, St. Paul Cos. Fishman left his post as chairman, president and CEO of Travelers Insurance Group and chief operating officer/finance and risk for Citigroup to join St. Paul just days before St. Paul posted a third-quarter net loss of $658.7 million, or $3.16 a share. Most of that loss could be traced to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, for which St. Paul's estimated pretax losses are $866 million. In addition to that concern, Fishman has identified three problem areas the company faces: medical malpractice, reinsurance and international business. He may find 2002 a particularly hot year in Minnesota.

Rod Fox, CEO, Benfield Group. Fox left a top position at E.W Blanch to join Benfield Greig Group, which recently acquired E.W Blanch Inc. to become the largest independent privately held reinsurance broker. With reinsurance rates expected to rise, terms expected to tighten and structured programs expected to grow in light of the Sept. 11 attacks, the role of the broker could become more important than ever. Fox's leadership of the newly merged company--and his ability to mend any ill will that may linger from his exit from Blanch--could determine whether Benfield Group wins in the battle for market share with public companies Aon and Marsh & McLennan's Guy Carpenter unit.

Larry G. Glasscock, president and CEO, Anthem Inc. Anthem completed its $2.1 billion initial public offering and its conversion to a public company in early November 2001, the largest public offering of a health-care insurer. Anthem provides health insurance to more than 7.8 million members as the Blue Cross and Blue Shield licensee for Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Colorado, Nevada and Maine.

Evan G. Greenberg, vice chairman and CEO, Ace Tempest Re. Once the heir apparent to succeed his father, Maurice R. Greenberg, as head of American International Group, the younger Greenberg is now responsible for the growth and development of Ace's global reinsurance operations.

Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg, chairman, American International Group Inc. Always outspoken and a major leadership presence for insurers, Greenberg is helping to position the industry for strength in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. He and other major executives called on Congress to form a reinsurance pool in the face of losses that are estimated to range between $30 billion and $70 billion. He's also been vocal in his support for a federal claims tribunal to handle liability claims stemming from the attacks. Adding to his responsibilities, Greenberg has been named chairman of Allied World Assurance Co. Ltd., a newly formed Bermuda reinsurer, that will write property catastrophe treaty reinsurance through an exclusive agency agreement with IPCRe Underwriting Services Ltd.

Ashok Gupta, CEO, lloyds.com. Lloyds.com faces a formidable challenge--how to convince the participants in the 300-year-old insurance market to embrace the opportunity to feed risks into the market electronically from around the world at a time when Lloyd's is facing $2.8 billion in net liabilities from the U.S. terrorist attacks.

Earnest Hines, president and CEO, American Skyline Insurance Co. American Skyline is going where few insurers dare to tread-the cities. The property/casualty insurer opened for business in 2001 and began selling policies in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. It is going after the underserved urban market, which traditionally has been unprofitable for insurers, but Hines believes he can make money there. The company is focusing on cities undergoing urban renewal and plans to expand to other cities. A lot of people in Baltimore and Washington are counting on American Skyline to succeed. A group of people in Minnesota are also banking on the company's success--St. Paul Cos., based in St. Paul, Minn., has provided $10 million in financial backing.

Heidi Hutter, CEO, Black Diamond Group. Black Diamond Group, a merchant bank and advisory company specializing in insurance company restructuring, was launched Nov. 6, 2001, with Hutter at the helm. Previously, Hutter was CEO for Swiss Re America and a member of the executive board of Swiss Re in Zurich, before leaving the company in 1999. She also was project director for the Equitas project at Lloyd's from 1993 to 1995. Now, this new venture is off to a quick start, investing in Talbot Holdings Ltd., a new Bermuda-based insurance holding company that bought Alleghany Underwriting Ltd. and is raising additional capital to support a new syndicate at Lloyd's for 2002.

Clayton Ingram, director of business development, South Carolina's Alternative Risk Transfer Services division. With South Carolina viewed as a contender among the new entrants to the captive market, Ingram faces the task of making the year-old domicile bloom. As the number of states becoming captive insurance domiciles continues to grow--it has almost tripled in four years--South Carolina, which takes pride in its aggressive reputation, will be faced with fierce competition both at home and from the Bermuda market.

W.G. Jurgensen, chairman and CEO, Nationwide Financial Services Inc. In August came news of a one-two punch affecting the variable life insurance market: Nationwide announced it would buy Provident Mutual Life Insurance Co. and sponsor its demutualization. Nationwide would gain Provident's career agency force of financial planners, and Provident Mutual would gain Nationwide's formidable force of independent distribution outlets. Upon the close of the transaction in the second quarter, Nationwide will become the third-largest provider of variable life insurance. The deal looks good on paper, but let's see how good Jurgensen and Nationwide are at integrating this acquisition.

Gary Lauer, CEO, eHealthInsurance Services Inc. Does this company have the cost-effective model for distributing health insurance to the 40 million-plus Americans who don't have any? The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company markets at www.ehealthinsurance.com. Lauer says the company is able to offer affordable coverages because conducting business online is cost efficient. The company also reaches the many small businesses without benefits managers through scores of full-time licensed agents who work by phone. Founded in 1997 and well capitalized, the company believes half of the uninsured in the United States can afford coverage and that they will make eHealthInsurance profitable in future years, especially if the government provides tax credits for health insurance.

Edward M. Liddy, chairman, president and CEO, Allstate Corp. Liddy faces a new challenge: steering the nation's second-largest personal lines company past a series of industrywide challenges that cropped up in 2001, including a struggling homeowners line whose losses largely contributed to a 64.9% nosedive in third-quarter net income. Will Liddy now be able to realize the sweeping goals set forth in November 1999 when Allstate announced a major reorganization with a new emphasis on technology?

Stephen W. Lilienthal, president and CEO, property/casualty, CNA. Prior to joining CNA last July to take responsibility for its property/casualty operations, Lilienthal was executive vice president for St. Paul's U.S. insurance operations. Now he is exercising his aggressive management style at CNA, which cleared the decks with its second-quarter reserve strengthening to be positioned to take advantage of the market hardening.

Mike McGavick, president and CEO, Safeco Corp. Since joining Safeco from CNA in January 2001, McGavick has taken aggressive action to improve the performance of its core insurance lines, strengthen its balance sheet and reduce expenses. McGavick has told equity analysts that Safeco has done well recently with short-term goals, but now it needs to take a longer look to the future and be disciplined about what it is, where it wants to go and how it's going to get there.

James E. McGreevey, New Jersey governor-elect. With some of the state's leading auto writers heading for the exit ramp, New Jersey's new governor will be called upon this year to tackle the state's auto insurance premiums, which are among the highest in the nation. During the campaign, McGreevey, a Democrat, said he favors more government involvement. His plan to reform auto insurance includes zero tolerance on fraud by auto shops, drivers, lawyers and doctors who rip off the system, bigger penalties for bad drivers so that good drivers don't pay for the bad ones, requiring insurers to notify all their customers when they are seeking a rate hike so consumers can shop around and switch companies before the rate hike hits, and a crackdown on uninsured drivers by setting up a computerized database in every police car.

Jose Montemayor, Texas insurance commissioner. Environmental factors and contract wording combine to make Texas a hotbed for toxic-mold claims, with an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 open mold claims at year-end 2001. Faced with skyrocketing combined ratios and increases in water-related losses, the top three homeowners insurers in the state--State Farm, Farmers and Allstate--placed a moratorium on writing policies that cover water-related claims. Weighing the needs of homeowners insurers that want higher premiums and tighter wording on mold-claim coverage against the plight of state residents who already pay the highest homeowners insurance premiums in the nation resulted in a difficult decision by Montemayor that did not entirely please either group.

Lori Nugent, attorney, Cozen O'Connor, Chicago. When it comes to awarding punitive damages to plaintiffs, juries can be easily swayed, and some multimillion-dollar awards come close to the size of lottery prizes or professional athletes' contracts. The trouble is that they may not correlate with the degree of the offense or with the law, which can cause financial hardship for defendants, insurers and the policyholders who pay premiums. At a time when medical malpractice lawsuits are threatening the viability of that insurance line and insurance-related class actions can result in awards of hundreds of millions of dollars, Nugent and other attorneys who specialize in appealing punitive damages may be in for a challenging year.

Michael G. Oxley, U.S. Representative, R-Ohio. When the U.S. House of Representatives created the Financial Services Committee and chose Oxley to head it, the insurance industry was pleased with both moves. The industry gained a House committee specifically charged with handling insurance issues, which it didn't have before, and while the committee was new, it wasn't being led by someone new to financial-services legislation. Oxley and Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., were the first in Congress to respond to insurers' call for federal help to solve a looming problem with reinsurance for future terrorism claims following the events of Sept. 11. Oxley's committee was the first to hold a formal hearing where industry representatives were invited to testify, and he and Baker crafted the first formal bill to deal with the problem. While it wasn't a perfect bill in the eyes of the industry; Oxley did show himself to be responsive to the industry and did so in a timely manner.

Arthur F. Ryan, chairman and CEO, Prudential Financial. The demutualization of Prudential Insurance Company of America made one of the country's largest life insurers one of the most widely held public companies in the world. The Newark-based financial-services giant sold in the neighborhood of 100 million shares of stock in its initial public offering. In addition, existing policyholders were given about 454.6 million shares of stock. As Prudential begins life anew as a public company, Ryan now faces the quarterly performance demands of the investment community and shareholder expectations of profits.

Leonard D. Schaeffer, chairman and CEO, WellPoint Health Networks Inc. WellPoint, which has about 10 million members, is on a buying spree. In mid-November WellPoint said it would spend $1.3 billion for CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield and its 1.3 million members in Maryland, Delaware, the District of Columbia and northern Virginia. That acquisition follows on the heels of WellPoint's October announcement that it would pay $1.3 billion for RightChoice Managed Care Inc., which has 2.8 million members. Schaeffer's challenge is to integrate the companies smoothly to take advantage of the potential benefits offered by a bigger portfolio of choice-based programs and the greater geographic reach.

Alice Schroeder, principal, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. Named for the first time to a top spot on Institutional Investor's All-America Research Team in 2001, Schroeder was especially visible in the days and weeks immediately following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. She and her staff published a daily barrage of detailed reports on the disaster's impact both on individual insurers and on the industry as a whole. In an interview with Best's Review earlier in the year, Schroeder said one of the most appealing parts of her job was "figuring out the thing that no one else has figured out." As the industry strives to cope with the impact of the attacks, a weakening economy and a hardening market, she'll have ample opportunity to do that in 2002.

Thomas Scully, administrator, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The health insurance industry is looking to Scully, to stem the flood of companies leaving the Medicare+Choice program. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, formerly known as the Health Care Financing Administration, predicted in late August that "several hundred thousand" people could be dropped from the program, because the number of plans willing to take Medicare patients is expected to continue to decline. The number of plans with Medicare contracts declined to 179 in 2001 from 346 in 1998. Insurers want regulatory relief and higher reimbursement.

Gregory V. Serio, New York superintendent of insurance. Not only is Serio the commissioner of a state battling one of the fastest-growing auto fraud problems in the United States, but he's been thrust farther into the spotlight because of the insured losses that resulted from the terrorist attacks and his state's role as domicile for the Lloyd's trust funds. Lloyd's syndicates maintain American trusts--funded at 100% of reinsurance liabilities and 30% of surplus lines liabilities--as security to ensure payment of claims if an underwriting syndicate fails and all other resources are exhausted. The funds are otherwise off limits under normal operating conditions, but there is flexibility for the New York insurance superintendent to let syndicates tap the funds in extraordinary circumstances to maintain short-term liquidity. That "extraordinary circumstance" arose Sept. 11, and now Lloyd's is fighting to relax constraints as it faces $2.8 billion in losses.

James N. Stanard, chairman, president and CEO, RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd. Bermuda-based RenaissanceRe, which was formed during a past reinsurance capacity crunch, is launching another reinsurer, DaVinci Re. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. will contribute $200 million, and RenaissanceRe will put up $100 million toward the $500 million initial capital infusion to start DaVinci. As the aftermath of Sept. 11 continues to separate the strong companies from the weak, RenRe and DaVinci could emerge stronger than ever.

Sy Sternberg, chairman, president and CEO, New York Life Insurance Co. When it came time for Sternberg and the New York Life board to confront the hot-button issue of whether to convert to a publicly traded company, they stuck with tradition and decided to remain a mutual. The decision surprised the domestic life insurance industry, but Sternberg relished the contrarian nature of it. He believed New York Life already had what other companies hoped to achieve through demutualization: a powerful brand, a productive distribution system, strong capitalization and revenues, With the company expecting about $100 million in claims from the events of Sept. 11, the decision may be tested this year.

Donald A. Stewart, chairman and CEO, Sun Life Financial Services of Canada Inc. Stewart will preside over the integration of Sun Life's $1.7 billion acquisition of Keyport Life Insurance Co. and Independent Financial Marketing Group from Liberty Financial Cos.--a move he has characterized as a "significant milestone" that will add scale, strengthen the company's product portfolio and expand its distribution in key target markets.

Therese M. Vaughan, Iowa insurance commissioner. As Vaughan serves as president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners this year, one of her more immediate challenges will be making sure the NAIC does not stand on the sidelines as the industry continues dealing with the events of Sept. 11 As one former commissioner told the NAIC during a recent gathering, if the NAIC does not take an active role in making sure the industry solves its reinsurance problem, it could appear that the problem is too big for the state commissioners and that federal regulation is needed. Vaughan will be faced with challenges to state regulation of insurance coming from within and outside the industry, as well as making certain the industry meets requirements of the federal Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act.

Melvyn I. Weiss, attorney, Milberg, Weiss, Bershad, Hynes & Lerach LLP The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have thrown gasoline on a volatile stock market. As U.S. corporations cut revenue projections and report losses instead of profits, that's bad news for directors and officers insurers. This environment is perfect for Weiss and his firm to continue their relentless filing of federal securities class-action lawsuits.

Gary Wendt, chairman and CEO, Conseco Inc. Hired in June 2000 to triage and heal the financially ailing Conseco, Wendt is staking his reputation on Six Sigma, a quality-control program that he expects to save the company $100 million in the first year.

Wilhelm Zeller, chairman, Hannover Reinsurance Co. Zeller heads the No. 5 reinsurer in the world, placing his company a notch below the true giants in an industry that is expected to see even more consolidation in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. Hannover Re is holding firm to an estimate of 400 million euro (about $355.1 million) of net losses from the attacks, after reinsurance, a figure that would wipe out its profit for 2001, but the company expects to recoup the losses within three years in a dramatically harder market. Zeller must navigate his company through an environment marked by an increasing flight to quality and rising pressures for consolidation among players that aren't in the top tier.